Any of you who’ve really read through this blog will know that I post “motivation hurdles” from time to time. This is an account of something specific that is bothering me, that i’m trying to get off my chest. I’m currently in the process of uploading my second video for this blog, and when I was editing the video and listening to myself speak, I was reminded of the passion I have for these kinds of things.

For everyone in their life, I think there are things that frustrate and bother them, and particularly as it relates to Japanese study I am this way as well. As I’ve said before, editing videos, doing graphic design and writing often take lots of mental energy, which sometimes doesn’t leave much “heavy brainpower” for Japanese. So sometimes when I want to study Japanese, I am too tense and it becomes nail-gnawingly frustrating.

So it’s a balance of

Being able to execute study time vs Wanting to execute study time

Everyone suffers from this problem, and I’m still trying to find my “optimum study time” which doesn’t seem to exist yet. Depending on my mood, how tired/ energized I am, I “may” study Japanese hardcore, or I “may” be working hardcore on another project.

Regardless as I will say in my next video, the fact of the matter is to be able to gauge yourself adequately, particularly as it relates to your sense of goal achievement.

If a person can’t gauge accurately, you will never feel like you are making progress. As it stands, I am finally almost finished learning the 2,040 basic Kanji I need to read standard Japanese. A part of me knows I could have finished learning these over a year ago, but I can’t blame myself for mental challenges that hit me at the time. Plus there is the matter of priority vs. necessity.

For a lot of people, learning a language isn’t a priority, or a necessity. It’s just a “thing they do” when they “feel like doing it”. For a long time I looked at my language study in this way and of course, it wouldn’t be the best experience because I didn’t have anything attached to the end result. My blanket goal was “speak Japanese at a high level of proficiency.”

“be able to read Manga”,etc.

But instead say I split it up into different types of goals regarding things I like to do:

Now in any of my studies, I have more impetus to push further because i’ve somewhat clarified the goals. But even so, I still got negative mental feedback, because I would set these goals and feel that I could never achieve them. So how will I maximize feeling good about my goals and actually working towards it?

When I was living in Hamamatsu, in Shizuoka, I came up with an idea that at the time, I didnt’ have the energy to implement. Now that i’m starting to gain a better handle on the language, I want to fiddle with tricks to gain well needed vocabulary that interest ME, versus learning random sentences that I might not use. The idea is to build interest in things relative to you, then expand outward. I’m testing aspects of it now, and once I get it more comprehensive, I will start to write/post videos about it.